A practical instrument to explore patients' needs in palliative care: the Problems and Needs in Palliative Care questionnaire — short version

Objective : Short and convenient checklists are necessary tools to support and structure needs assessments in daily palliative practice. This study aims to develop a short version of the Problems and Needs in Palliative Care questionnaire (PNPC-sv); a self-report questionnaire for patients covering all dimensions of palliative care, to investigate their problems and (unmet) needs. Methods : The original Problems and Needs in Palliative Care questionnaire (PNPC) instrument is a comprehensive checklist of problems and needs for palliative care, and has shown validity and reliability. With its 90 items, however, it is not always practical. Thus it was abridged to a short version with 33 items. The validity and reliability are established with its item response, its internal consistency, and with its correlations with the original PNPC and with European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 and COOP/WONCA quality-of-life measures. A secondary analysis was done...